Rabbi Michael L. Samuel's Book on Gen. 1-3

The reviews do not mention anything about the historical-cultural context of Genesis 1, 2 and 3 so I suspect that Rabbi Samuel does not delve into the Kushite context of Abraham's ancestors. Nor does he appear to address the origins of messianic expectation beginning in Genesis 3:15.

Pantheism has different versions. On one extreme all matter is divine and God has no independent existence. On the other extreme, in atheistic or physiomonistic pantheism, God's existence is denied and Nature alone exists. In all versions, the material world is all there is. There is no hope of the world to come. The Sacraments are a taste of the Resurrection from the dead and the eternal kingdom of God.

The Sacraments reject all forms of Pantheism. They are predicated on divine commandments enacted by divinely-appointed agents of God - priests. Baptism and Holy Eucharist speak of the transformation of finite matter and a new heaven and earth which cannot pass away.

The analogy of the Divine Groom and His Bride (the Church) is based on the binary framework of the whole of the Bible. The groom-bride motif is another version of the sun-moon motif found in the Psalms and the Song of Solomon. The point of the binary sets is that one is always greater than the other in some evident way. The male is larger and stronger than the female. The Sun gives light whereas the Moon merely reflects the Sun's light. We are not speaking of complementarity, but rather of the greater and the lesser.

At the Eucharist, all baptised persons, regardless of their gender, receive Christ as their superior. Were Christ not superior to us, He could not stoop down to save us (kenosis). The groom-bride binary analogy is yet another way to express His superiority to us and His desire for us. It is wonderful because it expresses the intimacy that Christ will have with the Church at the eschaton.

Thanks. What do you think of someone being transgendered. The argument is that gender is in the brain, so if they feel like they belong to another gender, they should go under the knife to fit that gender.?